


influencer hands won't fix your bad decisions

by The_IPRE



Category: Archive 81 (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, YouTube, oops we did a ritual to piss off our dead dad!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-14
Updated: 2020-07-14
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:42:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25262539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_IPRE/pseuds/The_IPRE
Summary: Nicholas has a Youtube channel and is given a ritual that he is told to share with no one. What happens next will shock you.
Comments: 17
Kudos: 35





	influencer hands won't fix your bad decisions

**Author's Note:**

> first fic in a While and it's for archive 81! there is little left in my skull but archive 81.

Nicholas Waters has a Youtube channel. It initially started as a school project, and then as a way to spend his Saturday nights rambling about the research that he had done for his thesis so that he could feel somewhat better about all of the work he had been putting into it. Life spun on, and eventually it became one of the few places where his degree was actually still useful.

Nicholas Waters has a half-sister, one who he didn’t meet until a few years prior but knows well enough to make up the difference. She’s bold and sharp and thinks it’s fucking hilarious that he has a Youtube channel where he talks about esoteric bits of French history.

Nicholas Waters had a father. Allegedly, anyway, for how present he was. No chance for him to make up for any of that now, dead and buried and leaving behind nothing but a will and enough resentment to ignore its orders. 

“Spooky magic ritual is still a weird as fuck thing to leave to your son,” Chris said, poking through the box of Popeyes she had picked up on her way over. “Good for you for disobeying his dying wish, though. You’re still a goddamn square, but this sort of makes up for it.”

Nicholas didn’t look up from where he was organizing the ritual components. “Well, if you spend your entire adult life ignoring your children, I think that he perhaps should have seen it coming that we would be ill-behaved. Besides, what kind of man leaves nothing but a ritual for his son and then explicitly says not to tell anybody about it?”

“A paranoid old fucker, that’s what.” Chris looked pleased with herself, pocket knife now in hand and grin flickering. “Also, I’m leaving the Popeye’s over here off camera, because as far as I know, you aren’t getting sponsored, and you don’t owe anybody free advertising.”

“I do indeed love living in a capitalist hellscape. You’re sure that this video won’t be taken down? What with all of the, you know.” Nicholas made lackluster gesture towards the knife.

“Yeah, dude, I’ve checked the Youtube terms of service or whatever. Drawing a few drops of blood should be fine. Besides, it’s not like they’re any good at regulating content anyway.”

“That is a good point,” Nicholas said, going back to straightening the mechanical pencil lead where it sat with the rest of the things that they had gathered on the coffee table. “I do wonder if this called for any specific kind of lead.”

“It didn’t, and besides, you’ve, like, triple-checked all that by now. You ready to start recording yet?”

“Quadruple-checked,” Nicholas said, just to get Chris to scoff. “Look, folding an origami crane is much more difficult than I was expecting. I don’t want to mess it up on camera.”

The couch gave out a, frankly, horrifying creak when Chris sauntered over and sat down, and even while Nicholas was distinctly _not_ looking, instead setting the camera to record, he could practically feel the raise of her eyebrows.

“Look, the camera’s on, we should get going,” Nicholas said, deadpan as he moved to sit next to her. He very intentionally did not let a wince show on his face when the couch protested his weight just as loudly as it had his half-sister’s.

“Fine, you can live. For now.” Chris gestured for him to begin, despite her words clearly eager for whatever way this shitshow would likely go.

Nicholas couldn’t exactly blame her. The tonal transition from French folklore around the revolution to doing-a-ritual-and-spiting-my-shitty-dead-dad-for-the-price-of-one was not going to be an easy needle to thread. Luckily, he did not exactly have a large number of followers. Just enough that it would likely leave Michael Waters rolling in his grave, and what was Nicholas’ life for if not that.

“Hello, viewers, and welcome to this video.” Nicholas sat up, laced his hands together like he was back to being a TA. “You have likely noticed that this video is in a different vein from most of my others-”

“I wonder what could have tipped them off, couldn’t have been the dashing stranger sitting next to you-”

“And so I will ask that you bear with me, as this is something of a passion project.”

Chris was slouched much more casually, one ankle resting on the other knee and grin sharpened. “Exactly. Our father was a raging dickhole, and we are passionate about ruining his legacy.”

“That is not quite how I would have put it, but yes.” The words felt clogged in Nicholas’ throat, but he swallowed past them. Stupid idea or not, he figured that the two of them deserved a little revenge quest. “He recently died, leaving me a strange ritual and the instructions to not share it with anyone.” 

“Of course, he then told me, and I, genius that I am, decided to help commandeer this channel,” Chris said, before saluting the camera. “You’re welcome.”

“Something like that. Anyway, I cannot say that I would recommend doing this at home? For one thing, we don’t know what will happen. Likely nothing, but I still believe that we should say that upfront.”

“Great! Now that all that terms and conditions bullshit is out of the way, it is time for weird ritual bullshit.” Chris sat up, very ready to blatantly ignore their father’s last wish. Nicholas couldn’t say he disagreed. “Nick?”

“Nicholas. And, yes, step one, crush some mechanical pencil lead,” he said, gesturing for Chris to start. 

“Also, for this whole thing to work, you apparently need to be recording,” Chris said, pulverizing the graphite with the hilt of her knife with frankly worrying efficiency. “Also, getting fried chicken from an establishment that will remain unnamed until it pays up is recommended. Not sure why, but you guys will probably learn that at the same time that we do. Next step is not so fun, don’t try this at home, yadda yadda yadda.”

“Yes, you will need to mix three drops of your own blood with the lead.” Nicholas pursed his lips as Chris pressed her knife against the pad of her index finger, but she didn’t even flinch at the pain. Three drops fell, and she put the injury in her mouth while smearing the strange mixture on the paper with her other thumb. 

“Your turn, bro,” Chris said, sliding Nicholas the square.

As he took it, crumpling the paper up before doing his best to smooth it out and fold it into a crane, he felt himself beginning to ease, slipping into the easy confidence he usually felt when recording. He liked having an organized problem to solve, he liked doing what he was good at, and this wasn’t quite either but it was close enough to both that he could fake it.

“Now, the next step is to fold this into an origami crane- weird, I know, but it’s not like we were the ones who came up with the ritual. Nicholas is doing this part because I couldn’t be assed to learn how to do origami just for this.”

“Also, you were quite bad at it.” Nicholas didn’t look up from where he was making sure that the fold was lined up exactly. If they were really doing this, he wasn’t going to have a poorly made crane.

Even if it was going to get torched immediately, he still had some dignity.

“Look, not everybody is as anal as you are about this shit. Some people have bigger things to be doing than littering their bedroom floor with paper birds just to impress their subscribers.”

“Well, with that weight on my shoulders, I hope that this will be enough to impress them,” Nicholas said, holding the crane up to the camera. It did look pretty good, if he was allowed to say that about his own creation, even though it was definitely covered in the weirdly gritty lead-and-blood concoction.

“Dude, you’ve gotta do the influencer hands with it.” At Nicholas’ uncomprehending look, Chris rolled her eyes. “Look, it’s- look, do this with your hands, it’s- it’s a _thing_ , how do you not know about influencer hands?”

Nicholas frowned, but still did his best to present the blood-stained bird the way she was showing him. “Perhaps it won’t come as much of a surprise to you, but I don’t believe that we run in the same social media circles.”

“That’s one way of putting it,” Chris said, passing him the trash can. “Next step is burning it, be safe, disable your smoke detectors first, you know how it goes.”

“I can’t believe that my channel is going to be encouraging arson.” Nicholas clicked on the lighter and lit one wing of the crane before dropping it into the can, wrinkling his nose at the smell. “I’m going to get demonetized.”

“Hang on, you’re making money from this?”

“Of course not.”

“Okay, that tracks,” Chris said with a laugh. “I just was worried for a second there about how many people might have been really into-”

Chris was cut off as the static electricity in the air seemed to multiply, and then a wind picked up, blowing the extra pieces of origami paper from the table. Everything in the poorly stocked cabinets were rattling, and there was a look of horrified excitement on Chris’ face that Nicholas was sure matched his own expression.

The pressure in the atmosphere continued to grow, crackling until Nicholas could see sparks bouncing between the strands of the rug, and the pressure began to hurt his ears and any excitement over the fact that apparently this was a real ritual that did actually work was beginning to be leached away by the fact that apparently this was a real ritual that did actually work _and he had no idea what it did_. 

“Oh, no-”

“Oh, _goddammit_ -”

Before them appeared a writhing ball of pure electricity, limbs unfurling like a stop-motion video. Teeth bloomed along every impossible twisting inch, and those strange mouths opened to release a horrifying voice that echoed around the small apartment. 

“ **I am the whisper on the wind.** ” Nicholas felt frozen in place, held down by the building static and pressure, and when he looked over to Chris, she looked to be in the same boat. " **I am the ice of winter’s heart.** " Her hand was flexing around her pocket knife, for all the good that might do against a being made out of lightning and incisors. " **I am the knife in the dreaming.** "

Those incisors spread into even wider grins as the being continued, and crackling sparks flew up from the rug to add to its form. “ **I am here to fill your darkest desires, and to exact my requests.** ”

The pressure built and built until it hurt, deep in his skull, and Nicholas wasn’t sure how much more of this he could take, breath trapped in his chest and obituary already unfurling before his eyes. _Idiot post-grad accidentally summoned an electricity demon and was found exploded in his thoroughly mediocre apartment_. 

Chris’ breathing was fast beside him, and then with a sudden _pop_ that felt like clearing his ears too quickly, the booming voice dissolved into staticked laughter. “Okay, I am sorry about that, but dudes, you should have _seen_ your faces. I was _not_ expecting that to go as well as it did, you guys have _gotta_ be new at this, right? I mean, ‘whisper in the wind’ and all that bullshit, it’s a good line but it did not deserve _nearly_ that reaction.”

Nicholas looked to Chris, and maybe they didn’t have an unspoken language the way that some siblings did but he was pretty sure that there was a clear _what the fuck_ scrawled across both of their faces. Whatever they had been expecting from this ritual, he would put money on neither of them having guessed that it would summon a frat bro made of static and teeth into his living room.

“Aw hell yeah, you got me Popeye’s!”

Nicholas had a feeling that he was going to be relying quite heavily on his time spent as a TA wrangling hungover college students.

Well, just one more reason to resent his father.

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to leave a comment or kudos, or come talk to me on tumblr at [the-ipre](https://the-ipre.tumblr.com)!


End file.
